There is a Sweetness
by SarahFromHell
Summary: One-shot, post-movie, Cecile's POV. I'm one of the probably very few CI fans who likes her character.


Dear Kathryn,

I thought that I was over high school, but seeing you at the reunion brought back a flood of old memories. It was always you. Sebastian thought it was him but it was always you, you, you. Your voice, your touch, your words corrupting me. When he kissed me, I felt you behind it.

I was there because I wanted to see Ronald. What I did to him wasn't right. I betrayed him. He was the most innocent of all of us, you know. You and Sebastian were the big-time players. I was young and stupid but I wanted a sexual awakening, and I got it. Annette's "morals" faltered and her heart did get broken but at least she knew how to play the game, well enough anyway to ruin you at the end, to become queen of the school later although you weren't there for that. But all Ronald wanted was me. All he wanted was our innocent little high school romance, his beautiful Cecile at the cello, kisses on the back of my neck and slowly, slowly turning it into something more. If you and Sebastian hadn't ever noticed me, we probably would've kept on exactly like that, graduating slowly from kissing to second base and getting to intercourse, I don't know, senior year. And he would've asked me every time, "You're sure you're ready for this? I don't want to pressure you..." And we'd be together to this day, and I'd be a completely different person.

Then again, maybe not. Ronald confronted me after the infamous journal was released, and the first thing he did was break up with me. He yelled that he was stupid to have ever loved me, that I had deceived him, that he'd thought I was special but I was nothing but a disgusting whore. Sebastian had called me a disgusting whore too, towards the end of our sleeping together, and it had rolled off me like nothing because I knew by then that Sebastian was an asshole to everybody he wasn't trying to seduce. But when Ronald said that, it broke me. I apologized, actually literally got on my knees and begged him to take me back. He turned around and just left me there. And Mom, that racist bitch, said it was all for the best. She was wrong about that, even by her own narrow lights. Because after my brief moment of triumph in handing you the journal, the real punishment came and it was all for me. I was the school slut. Girls avoided me, guys would push me up against the lockers and tell me, "Don't lie, I know you want it." It was hell. But it was also freedom. I didn't have to lie about my sex acts like you did, everyone knew I was dirty and corrupt. I slept with everyone's boyfriends because why not? None of the girls were my friends. And I was multi-orgasmic, every time, not because they were any good in bed but because I come easily, it's part of my nature. The secret of it, the joy of it, had always been in me.

I talked to Ronald at the reunion, briefly. All of his hatred for me, all of his bitterness, was still there. I understood by then that a lot of it wasn't really directed at me, that his pain wasn't just because I cheated on him but because of the treatment he'd received from my bitch Mom, but still, it hurt. He was there with his fiancee, a black woman. She looked at me with the same contempt he did. I couldn't blame either of them. Later that night I cornered him while she was at the drinks table, apologizing yet again, feeling even as I did it like I'd regressed to stupid high-school me, always saying too much, always feeling too much. But he told me this time that he was the one who should apologize.

"I never told anyone this, but...you weren't the only one who cheated."

"_What?_ Who was it?"

"It was Kathryn."

"Of course."

And it's a lie, when I write I went to the reunion because of Ronald. I came to see you. Ronald was my first love but you were my first seduction, my first perverted lust. Sleepovers and makeovers that never quite stuck, your almost-whispered "We're best friends, you can tell me anything," soft fingers running through my hair and "practice" kisses. A desire I didn't have words to name. Oh, I know you don't care. We talked for a bit at the reunion, you looking perfect as ever and obviously bored but making polite conversation. Playing the game. You told me the name of the financial firm you worked for and seemed annoyed when I didn't immediately recognize it. Your fiance wasn't there but you had his ring on your finger, a big fat diamond ring that gave out light without warmth, a brightness that seemed to cut, just like your eyes always did. It occurred to me after the whole party was over that you might've made him up, just to complete the picture of triumph over your old classmates. Or maybe not. Who knows? You didn't really say much about him, other than to mention that you were engaged and that he worked for the same firm you did, and then point out the ring. I couldn't imagine him as anything other than a pinstriped suit, handsome enough to make other girls jealous, in private just like Court and all the other girls' boyfriends I'd slept with. If there was anyone on earth you'd loved even a little, he was dead. I kept the conversation going longer than really necessary, trying to get up the courage to tell you what you'd meant to me, each time looking into your face and faltering before your blank gaze. Actually, I couldn't be sure you even remembered me. It hurt, but not as much I'd thought it would. I knew I had my loves to come home to.

It was in class that I first met them...met her, I should say, Danielle, the female half of the couple who would turn my life around. In my gender studies class at Hampshire College. I know, you've probably never heard of Hampshire. That's okay. She came to me after class and asked if we could hang out together in the cafeteria, do a study session over lunch. She said she'd liked what I'd said in class discussion about hierarchies in female social groups, my concept of the "imaginary male gaze" as a marker for social status, independent of what any real guys thought. I said yes, of course, but it was all I could do not to gape. This was the girl I'd admired from afar since starting the class, gorgeous punk-chic Danielle with her hand always up and that secret smile she had whenever she got up to speak, like she knew more than she was talking about but would never be so gauche as to reveal it in an academic setting. She looks nothing like you, with her tight neon-colored jeans and black hair with green streaks in it and curves you'd probably label as overweight, but something about her had reminded me of you...her unshakeable confidence, I suppose. Our conversation started out philosophical, but soon I found myself telling her about the torments I'd gone through in high school. I was ashamed to find myself crying. She took my hand and said, "Don't cry. You are a beautiful and special girl, and they were idiots to treat you like anything less." And I would've thought she was just humoring me like adults do when they want to be comforting, except that I could see the way she was looking at me. Like she wanted to devour me. And then later that night she took me over to the off-campus apartment where she lived with her boyfriend David, a skinny brown-skinned guy who didn't look like her superficially, but the way they moved, the streaks in their black hair, their casual glances, even their names, Danielle and David, it was almost a sibling kinship. The two of them together. Yes.

"And what do we have here?"

"Cecile. From my gender studies class?"

"Oh yes." He looked at me the way she did. It was unreal. We sat on cushions on the floor, drank and talked. They passed around a joint, and on my turn, I coughed and turned away. "Relax, Cecile," David said, "you're a freshman. Nobody's going to think less of you just because you've never smoked a joint before."

"Besides," Danielle piped in, "she's probably had more sex than either of us."

"Is that so?" David said.

"I mean, yeah," I mumbled, and then more loudly, "like I was telling Danielle. I kind of got a reputation as a slut in high school, so I figured, why not take advantage?"

"Use it for your own pleasure," David said. "Nothing wrong with pleasure."

"Exactly," I said, all hesitation gone. I thought of what you'd said about sex, that everyone does it but no one talks about it. And idiot high-school me saying: "So it's like a secret society?"

And then they let me in.

I felt David reach over and muss up my hair, and then David's lips on mine, impossibly soft for a boy's. Danielle kneeled in front of me and ran her hands over my nipples, over and then under the thin fabric of my pink shirt, and all I could think of was, please don't stop. And then...okay, I'll stop here. This is a letter, not a ten-page porn story. But what I do want you to know is that I was going to leave the next morning, and they stopped me. "So soon?" David said.

"I have to get to class," I said, lying through my teeth.

"Oh, all right," Danielle said. "But come back again soon. You belong to us now."

I became their pet, a label both humiliating and thrilling. I'll never how it felt the first time Danielle put the collar on me, the first time David complimented me by calling me his good little slut. But I'll also never forget the first time we had breakfast after we started living together, making omelettes with unpacked boxes all around us. By that time I'd grown to understand neither of them was close to perfect, had found out that Danielle had bipolar disorder only partially controlled by meds and that David, for all his air of command, was physically weaker than most boys. But it didn't matter, any more than it had mattered to them that in many ways, I'm still the clumsy girl who completely misreads social cues.

We're still living together now. They're giving me partial financial support (thanks for nothing, Mom!) while I work part-time at the local bookstore and attempt to find a real job, no easy task given that my B.A. was in Critical Social Thought. What can I say, I chose those classes because I liked them. I guess I never really learned how to do everything right. Not like you at the reunion, elegant and coldly perfect in your Chanel suit. All I wanted in the end was to enter into that perfection, your circle, your "secret society", that thing even a blind person like me could see that you and Sebastian had. When Danielle and David touch me, it feels a bit like the way you and Sebastian used to touch me, that kind of intense, meticulously deliberate seduction. But it's not the same, it's better. Because there is a sweetness there.

Love always,

Cecile


End file.
